H/D Hols gives me thoughts
Jul. 22nd, 2012 05:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lokifanWriting your ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
hd_holidays sign-up makes you really think about what you most want out of the pairing - or at least, that’s how it is for me. Probably because the fest is at that sweet spot between ‘pairing + theme = don’t need loads of details re: squicks & genre requests’ and ‘multifandom rarepairs, can’t give too many details & close stuff down’.
Like, listing common H/D cliches I like and don’t like. Well, do I like veela!Draco? On the whole I’d say I do - there are veela!Draco fics I love, and... on the other hand, the fic that comes to mind first as an example of my love for veela!Draco is a fic where Draco keeps insisting he’s a veela and Harry agrees because he loves him.
Plus all the random squicks/things-I-don’t-want I start listing, beyond mpreg and Albus Severus/Scorpius. It quickly gets really esoteric: screw talking scat, what I want to avoid is fic where Hermione is vital and supportive, but Ron is unsupportive or absent. And if people have to pay to use St Mungo’s, I am going to be sad. Why deny wizards the NHS?
It’s funny, thinking about the particular elements that go towards a fic you like, why it is that certain fics stick in the memory for particular people. Because there’s always the true, but enormously unhelpful ‘my kink is good writing’ thing. Or listing certain kinds of plot points: I bow to no one in my love of down-on-his-luck!Draco, f’rinstance. But I’m finding myself digging into those slightly unquantifiable things: I like Harry and Draco’s friends to be important to them, if not plot-vital. I like a sense of a world beyond the two of them - except for when the claustrophobia’s the point. I like stories about Harry and Draco finding ways to define themselves. I like fics with challenges, but not antagonists.
I really like meta jokes. One day I’m going to write a scene where:
HARRY & DRACO: *shake hands*
HARRY: *makes Significant Face*
HARRY: *meaningful silence*
DRACO: What?
HARRY: It’s just... look where we are now... do you ever wonder what might have happened, if I’d shook your hand at the beginning?
DRACO: What beginning?
HARRY: …you know, on the train.
DRACO: I seriously have no idea what you’re talking about. When was this?
*this ramble brought to you by feeling very sick, and the heat*
hd_holidays sign-up makes you really think about what you most want out of the pairing - or at least, that’s how it is for me. Probably because the fest is at that sweet spot between ‘pairing + theme = don’t need loads of details re: squicks & genre requests’ and ‘multifandom rarepairs, can’t give too many details & close stuff down’.Like, listing common H/D cliches I like and don’t like. Well, do I like veela!Draco? On the whole I’d say I do - there are veela!Draco fics I love, and... on the other hand, the fic that comes to mind first as an example of my love for veela!Draco is a fic where Draco keeps insisting he’s a veela and Harry agrees because he loves him.
Plus all the random squicks/things-I-don’t-want I start listing, beyond mpreg and Albus Severus/Scorpius. It quickly gets really esoteric: screw talking scat, what I want to avoid is fic where Hermione is vital and supportive, but Ron is unsupportive or absent. And if people have to pay to use St Mungo’s, I am going to be sad. Why deny wizards the NHS?
It’s funny, thinking about the particular elements that go towards a fic you like, why it is that certain fics stick in the memory for particular people. Because there’s always the true, but enormously unhelpful ‘my kink is good writing’ thing. Or listing certain kinds of plot points: I bow to no one in my love of down-on-his-luck!Draco, f’rinstance. But I’m finding myself digging into those slightly unquantifiable things: I like Harry and Draco’s friends to be important to them, if not plot-vital. I like a sense of a world beyond the two of them - except for when the claustrophobia’s the point. I like stories about Harry and Draco finding ways to define themselves. I like fics with challenges, but not antagonists.
I really like meta jokes. One day I’m going to write a scene where:
HARRY & DRACO: *shake hands*
HARRY: *makes Significant Face*
HARRY: *meaningful silence*
DRACO: What?
HARRY: It’s just... look where we are now... do you ever wonder what might have happened, if I’d shook your hand at the beginning?
DRACO: What beginning?
HARRY: …you know, on the train.
DRACO: I seriously have no idea what you’re talking about. When was this?
*this ramble brought to you by feeling very sick, and the heat*
no subject
Date: 2012-07-22 04:43 pm (UTC)except for when the claustrophobia’s the point Now I kinda want to read a story about them being stuck in a cabin together - maybe it's a couple's bonding retreat? - and all the emotional ups and downs that produces.
Pairing specific fests are nice this way, because you can dig into the dynamics that make you love a story. The thing that makes me most sad about my waning enthusiasm for slash it means not being able to play in pairing-specific fests any more and thus having to write much more general requests.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-22 09:43 pm (UTC)Like, I have a thing about foreskin; that is, don't friggin' circumcise my characters if you don't have a very good reason! Like religion or medical stuff that I'd then want to know about to buy that these regular non-Jewish and non-Muslim British boys are cut. Just. Really. (Also, I really do prefer guys au natural, so there's that too. I did some serious research when I wrote Avengers to find out if Steve and Tony would or wouldn't be, hoping to get at least one of them out of it! *G* )
Er. I ramble. Point is: you can totally write those things up as things you like or don't. Esp the Ron and Hermione thing. Those are tropes, after all.
Also, handshake thing… yeah :-D That would be fun!
*sends get well thoughts*
no subject
Date: 2012-07-23 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-28 06:45 pm (UTC)It's fun to think about which of my kinks are bulletproof in any fandom, and which are things I want out of specific ships. Like, one of my top three panfandom kinks is teamwork, but in one place that might merge with other kinks to become, "seamless tag-teaming in a D/s threesome," while in another fandom I might be horrified by the idea of D/s, but massively, equally gratified by, "passes Broccoli Test while collecting mold samples for forensics lab."
One day I’m going to write a scene where...
I sort of did that in my one H/D story. They reconcile, Harry sticks his hand out, and Draco rolls his eyes and calls him ludicrous and overdetermined.